SALINGER, J.D. (1919-2010). The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

First edition. Catcher's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has entered the pantheon of American literary heroes. In the years following World War II, “the young used many voices—anger, contempt, self-pity—but the quietest, that of a decent perplexed American adolescent, proved the most telling" (Burgess, 99 Novels, pp. 53-54).

Octavo. Original black cloth (tiny tear at head of upper joint); original pictorial dust jacket by Michael Mitchell with portrait photograph of Salinger by Lotte Jacobi on rear panel (toning, light wear to spine panel ends and folds including a 1.5 inch separation and small chip at upper flap fold, some old tape reinforcement on verso, a couple of scratches to author's nose, price-clipped).